Going Over the Top to Find Friends

At a meeting last week, one of mysmart colleagues said media executives arespending a lot of time trying to sort out friendsfrom foes.

As in, Netflix, friend or foe?

Or Apple, friend or foe?

Both of those examples lead to the overarchingone: Over-the-top, friend or foe?

For cable, the Netflix answer seems simple:foe. Netflix competes against video on demandand uses up high-speed Internet bandwidth inthe process. On the other hand, it’s one reason tobuy a broadband connection.

But wait, Time Warner Cable, Comcast and CablevisionSystems are all seeing big demand for new applications that letsubscribers view video on an Apple iPad. That’s pretty consumer-friendly. It’s not necessarily programmer-friendly (see TimeWarner Cable v. Viacom and vice versa), but it’s viewer-friendly.

Which leads to the over-the-top category.

It would seem to be a foe to the pay TV bundle,giving consumers more ways to pick and choosetheir programming.

Bazinet said the average U.S. household pays for130 channels and watches 17.8.

But you know pay TV providers are exploringways to make over-the-top options work for them.

Todd Spangler blogged about a test Comcastplans on the MIT campus this fall, delivering live TVprogramming to computers or Web-connected TVs.

While it’s described as being on the closedecosystem of MIT, the test could pay dividendsshould Comcast decide to try stemming itsvideo-subscriber declines by competing with othercable operators outside the Comcast footprint.

There are no plans to do so — at least not yet. But Comcasthas certainly been kicking the idea around internally, Spanglerreported.

By the way, the fourth potential threat Bazinet identified(and called “likely”) comes from … Dish Network and Echo-Star. They’ve been investing in ways and means of deliveringcontent to consumers over the Internet, slashing costs.

Instead of the $750 Dish spends to acquire a subscriber, theWeb could cut the cost to $125 in advertising, Bazinet said.